What if I, as a teacher, took a step back in order to prop the students to take steps forward…? Forward, towards learning and learning techniques for life. I wonder if it’s even possible to do that with herds of students and so little time for each and everyone. Does it all comes down to motivation? Maybe my biggest responsibility as a teacher is to encourage the students to take charge of their learning and urge them to strive towards their vision of what they want to become? It all sounds great, but how do I achieve that?

When googling create motivation I get tons of suggestions of how to stay insanely self-motivated and how to develop unstoppable motivation. At wikiHow I learn that I’m supposed to build competence and confidence, encourage active engagement and help students to overcome procrastination. Is this even possible to do when you meet 135 students for four hours?

The Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, provides an overview of different types of motivation, whereas the intrinsic motivation fits well with our educational platform that emphasize the students as active learners. As I understand it, intrinsic motivation builds upon a feeling of importance not for anyone else but for yourself. For me as a teacher, my responsibility, according to A Model of Intrinsic Motivation by Middleton et al (1995) is to design learning activities that both offers students a degree of personal control and are stimulating.

Many years ago, I heard a keynote speaker talk about rhetoric. It was Elaine Eksvärd and the thing I recall from her presentation is that what we remember is the stories. And I believe she’s right, I think it is true, because I remember her story about her beloved grandpa. As stated by A Model of Intrinsic Motivation one key component to attain this type of motivation is to present something that are interesting to the students. A solution for me, might be to present cases (stories) concerning my teaching subject that are interesting. Could it be that this strategy has untapped possibilities for learning? I don’t know, but I might as well try it out.